Seventh International Conference of the Medieval Chronicle Society
The University of Liverpool
7-10 July, 2014
Keynote speakers include: Professor Pauline Stafford (University of Liverpool), Professor Anne D. Hedeman (University of Kansas), Professor Marcus G. Bull (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), and Professor Christopher Young and Dr Mark Chinca (University of Cambridge).
The aim of the seventh conference is to follow the broad outline of the previous six conferences, allowing scholars who work on different aspects of the medieval chronicle (historical, literary, art-historical) to meet, announce new findings and projects, present new methodologies, and discuss the prospects for collaborative research.
The main themes of the conference are:
- Chronicle: history or literature?
The chronicle as a historiographical and/or literary genre; genre identification; genre confusion and genre influence; typologies of chronicle; classification; conventions (historiographical, literary or otherwise) and topoi.
- The function of the chronicle
The function of chronicles in society; contexts historical, literary and social; patronage; reception of the text(s); literacy; orality; performance.
- The form of the chronicle
The language(s) of the chronicle; inter-relationships of chronicles in multiple languages; prose and/or verse chronicles; manuscript traditions and dissemination; the arrangement of the text.
- The chronicle and the representation of the past
How chronicles record the past; the relationship with ‘time’; how the reality of the past is encapsulated in the literary form of the chronicle; how chronicles explain the past; motivations given to historical actors; the role of the Divine.
- Art and Text in the chronicle
How art functions in manuscripts of chronicles; do manuscript illuminations illustrate the texts or do they provide a different discourse that amplifies, re-enforces or contradicts the verbal text; origin and production of illuminations; relationships between author(s), scribe(s) and illuminator(s).
Papers in English, French or German are invited on any aspect of Medieval Chronicle. Papers will be allocated to sections to give coherence and contrast; authors should identify the main theme to which their paper relates. Papers read at the conference will be strictly limited to twenty (20) minutes in length. The deadline for abstracts is Saturday 1 February 2014 (maximum length one (1) side A4 paper, including bibliography). Please email your abstract to medchron@liverpool.ac.uk.